The Riots.

This is a blog about videogames, and as such I have restricted my posting to writing about that topic. But the England riots are something which I feel I must comment on. We have brought up a generation of really rotten kids. Not just in England, but in many countries around the world. We listened to the do-gooders with their platitudes of political correctness. We told each and every child that they are a special and unique sunflower who now believes that the world owes them a living. We removed corporal punishment from schools because violence is bad. We removed sports carnivals as we thought it would be terrible for the precious babies psyche if they were to come last. In some cases we removed grades, as these were deemed too confronting for children to be able to handle.

We promoted a society of instant gratification, where everyone is told that to be happy you must have the latest stuff. We listened to the “experts” and put children’s bad behaviour down to disorders. Everyone has to have a disorder now. Thus we taught them not to have any responsibility for their actions; how could it not be so as we were so quick to blame their behaviour on any number of disorders of which the poor little dears had no control over.

And now we have this generation acting in a purely narcissistic way, with no responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Why this is a surprise to anyone I do not know. This generation has been brought up to have no respect for authority. When teachers are too scared to go into their own classrooms what did we think would happen next?

And the truly frightening thing is that this rotten generation is a step away from producing the next one. What values will they hand down to their own children? People have been calling for the powers at be to take a firmer stand with the rioters. That’s a nice short term solution. But the real people who should be put up against the wall are the do-gooders who instigated this mess in the first place. Instead of weeding bad apples out of our society we have effectively cultivated them. You reap what you shall sow.

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24 Responses to “The Riots.”

It is almost as though you believe rioting is something only this generation has done. That whole ridiculous “kids aren’t what they used to be” argument? That means you officially have (prematurely) entered senility. It is an unreasonable claim to justify a flimsy, vapid social commentary.

Just browse that list. Either we have gotten parenting strategies wrong since the beginning of time, or there have been groupthink assholes and/or people with legitimate grievances in every generation.

Have to agree with Azuriel here. Go back to any period of history and you’ll find examples of exactly the same thing happening.

In any case, a few hundred or thousand kids or whatever do not represent a whole generation. There are millions of kids in England who would have absolutely nothing to do with anything like this at all. So yeah, some kids are horrible thugs, the vast majority aren’t.

When the police stand back and watch mobs loot and set fire to building is there any wonder they are having trouble reasserting their authority. If people had acted to defend their property I wonder who the police would have arrested first?

PS. When you start looking back on the good old days it mean your getting old and grumpy. The good old days were never that great.

Sorry Adam your wrong: the reason for the riots despite what politicans will say is very bad police relations with the communties they are supposed to serve. The first incident to spark it was the shooting of a “known gangster” who had a loaded gun with a live round in the chamber by armed police. This is itself fair play as far as I am concerned, but in the immediate aftermath of this the police made several inaccurate press briefings. Including one claiming falsely the dead guy was mentally Ill. The family held a peaceful protest to demand answerrs: all went well until a 16 year old girl approached the police line and started yelling at them on the subject of justice. The BBC reporter who witnessed this was shy on what exactly she said but graphic in the description of the 5 policemen who broke the lines to batoncharge 15 yards to her, beat her to the ground and give her a sustained beating. This in front of a crowd of 150+ people who were there to complain about police brutality: “brutailty? we’ll show you brutailty!” The fact the crowd went up like a torch doesnt surprise me. We have been bombarded with images of burning shops, yet also of riot police beating people who havent done anything wrong. A guy and his girl, the police officer runs 30 yards to twat him in the stomach and as hes doubled over his girl cowers over him protecting him from the up raised baton striking her arms. The answer to all this order ofc is exactly what the media suggests and the polticans demand: more extreme police brutality.

God help us when the time comes to protest the abolition of the NHS and the welfare state.

I don’t disagree with your point Adam but neither do I believe it’s as simple as this. The AU article you linked was a lot closer to the truth. The riots were criminality rather than revolution and a lot to do with the Met Police force’s inability to respond effectively due to cuts, inclusive policing styles and well organised trouble makers.

I’m English, I work in London and I’m old enough to remember the Toxteth and Handsworth riots of the 80s. There is no comparison between the social unrest that was rampant back then and this recent arson and loot fest.

Why this kicked off right now I’m not sure but I do know that it isn’t a politically motivated message to the state and neither is it simply bad parenting. If you check out the subsequent court cases you’ll see that a lot of the people who were charged were middle class, middle income kids that just went with the flow, it was a bit of a laugh. Which lends itself to the theory that they did it because they could, not because they’re a generation of really rotten kids. However, I do agree with you that the liberalisation of society in general made it easier for them to make the wrong choice.

The UK press is currently bombarding us with pet theories about these riots, for them it’s a bluebird, a news bonanza when most of the UK is on holiday (including parliament) so nothing much usually happens. It’s being milked for all it’s worth so I wouldn’t rely upon it always being accurate, impartial reporting (including Auntie Beeb).

I think that David Cameron is going down a very dangerous path by laying the blame at the feet of social media. Considering how vital social media was to genuine regime change in the Arab Spring, his calls for it to be regulated would be very sinister if made by a government such as Syria for example.
I think that it’s not just bad parenting; it’s a culmination of factors which have resulted in a generation who has no conception of the consequences for their actions.

Cameron’s obsession with social media and particularly Blackberrys is just displacement activity in this instance. He’s investigating the methods rather than addressing the causes because it’s easier.

But more generically I agree with you, the trend towards internet censorship (lead by your own government*) is a concern and an inevitability. It has been shown that the net provides a capability to subvert power that has never before been seen and this frightens the traditional power base.

The article you linked is the most vapid generational diatribe I have ever read. It is seriously abhorrent.

What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people’s existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain “mentally fit”, has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention.

Of course welfare did it, right? Nevermind any of the reasons why this generation is more reliant on welfare than any that came before it [citation needed]. The article goes on to say:

Nurtured in large part by the welfare state, financially, physically and educationally, socialised more by the agents of welfarism than by their own neighbours or local representatives, these youth have little moral or emotional attachment to their communities.

And I would actually agree with that. But again, it is blaming the smoke and not the fire. Why are these people on welfare to begin with? Why are they not active, enfranchised stakeholders in their communities? Welfare is what happens when you are not getting those things; welfare does not cause them. Removing welfare does not spontaneously make rich, vibrant communities. Having jobs, a functioning political system, social mobility, and reasons to be optimistic about the future creates rich, vibrant communities.

You are wrong; welfare does cause these problems if used inappropriately, which is what has happened in Britain. Responsibility and opportunity but most importantly incentive have been smothered by the handing out of welfare without thought to the consequences. There are communities in Britain where three generations of people in the same family groups have never worked. People who have been on welfare for 30 years. This breeds a moral vacuum which erodes community spirit and individual restraint. Add to that an education system which is ill equipped to provide people with the basic skills to lead productive lives and you have anarchy.

Welfare has been the easy short term fix to social malaise; throw money at the problem and make it go away. In Australia we have found out with the Aboriginal community that this has resulted in a disaster – communities that are completely morally bankrupt. The Aboriginal leaders such as Noel Pearson are now working with the government to reduce their communities reliance on the welfare system, and it is starting to have successful results. Noel Pearson is famous for using the national press to beg the federal government to stop giving welfare to his people. It is a poison which takes away the incentive to work, to make something of yourself, to have hope for the future.

If it did how do you explain the London female who was likely to lose her job, the 13 year old, the semi professional footballer, the girl who is an Olympics ambassador and the primary school worker ? Victims of the welfare state – I doubt it ?

More likely people who were caught up in the excitement of the moment, fueled by the social media mis-truths and aware that the police were relatively powerless to respond effectively.

Claims that a particular generation is more wicked, stupid or whatever are pretty silly because they’re inevitably proven wrong. This whole post was written before (and better) by Hesiod:

“I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint”

On the top of whether welfare is to blame or not, of course it is. Something given has no worth, you earn something for it to have value and that simply doesn’t happen on our welfare state over here and hasn’t for years. The commenters stating that not all people arrested were on welfare and that they just got ‘caught up’ is hardly an excuse or justification for the masses out there who committed these acts because they felt they could. As if they were owed more.

The reasons for the welfare system and social housing schemes have been forgotten and replaced with a system of supporting groups of people who have no interest in working for society.

Welfare has an important role to play in society and saves thousands of people every year who, through no fault of their own need support. But it equally provides thousands more with a method of sustaining themselves while committing crime and disorder or simply living indolently because there is no reason for them to do otherwise.

In reference to your last paragraph, welfare used in this way replaces an individuals self respect. It also has the effect of creating a parent/child type of relationship between the state and the welfare recipient, with the corresponding behaviour problems.

It speaks volumes that in the years 2000-2008 youth unemployment was high, yet Britain had to encourage outside work populations such as the Poles to come and do jobs that nobody in Britain wanted to do.

You’re absolutely right, not being on welfare is no more of a excuse than being on welfare when it comes to making a moral decision about whether or not to join a loot and crime party, being involved is just wrong.

But my point was and still is that the minority of welfare abusers do not conveniently explain the rioting. It’s an agreeable but dangerous stereotype that avoids having to get to the root of the problem.

Adam – We didn’t encourage people of other countries to come and work in the UK, we were forced to open our borders by the EU.

Adam – I had to link this just in case you hadn’t yet crossed your radar. With respect to the earlier concerns that Cameron was blaming the social network. The courts have decided that rather than blame the media, they’re going to punish the crime. A wholly more appropriate course of action in my opinion.